Category: Highlands Hollow Brewhouse

2015 BEER DISCOVERY TOUR: HIGHLANDS HOLLOW BREWHOUSE, BOISE IDAHO (JUNE 24, BREEWERY STOP #1) The first day of our journey to the east coast in late June on the beer discovery tour (click here to read about the whole trip), we stopped in Boise ID for lunch at the Highlands Hollow Brewhouse. This old-school brewery is located on the north edge of town, just past downtown off of N. Harrison Blvd where it turns into Bogus Basin. While there are a number of breweries in the area that we could have gone for lunch, I wanted to revisit this great establishment as it had been over a year since I was last there and I was curious what their brewer had produced since then. The vibe is certainly on the ‘down to Earth’ and everyone is treated with attention and respect. This is a ‘family’ restaurant that serves beer, there is a small bar you can sit at, but for the most part, it’s a big room with lots of friendly people. We arrived just at the start of the day-time lunch rush. Actually, it’s not much of a rush, but more of a trickle of visitors and locals. The …

2015 BEER DISCOVERY TOUR, Portland OR to Portland ME and back…7800 miles later… From late June to early July 2015 I was lucky enough to go on a cross country road trip with Gary and our nephew Devin. We drove my car from Portland Oregon to Portland Maine in just about three weeks. We took a ‘central US’ path East and came back taking a more northern passage. Regarding where we went each day, we made it to about 40 breweries and a handful of tap-houses, bars, and brewpubs to find local beers and food along the way. While the long distance driving was challenging some days (10+ hrs at a time), we really enjoyed the trip with it’s the ever-changing scenery and wonderful cities, towns, and people we met. Before leaving on the trip, we gathered and then took a couple of cases of local specialty beers for our friend Rusty in Pittsburgh. The sucky part was that while we wanted the beers to not get ruined by the heat, we ended up unloading and reloading it a LOT as we stopped each night. This is a valuable learning experience, to stick to mailing stuff like beer and wine, …